Humans, am I right?
by rataplani
Summary: Once upon a time, some bright spark at Aperture had given all the robots the ability to smell. Or, Wheatley was being literal that one time he insulted humanity.


It was odd, he thought, how different this human was from the other test subjects he'd taken care of through the years.

Frankly, Wheatley had to admit that he liked guiding her around. Leaving out that one little failure to catch him early on, she'd really been much nicer than all the other humans he knew. Of course, he hadn't actually seen that many humans up and about since the big ol' neurotoxin release back in **[ERROR: DATA REDACTED]**, but the point still stood! She never said a word, so his chatter was the only thing to break the monotonous silence as they headed through the facility. Ha, he could almost pretend he was talking to another Personality Core, back in the days when the facility had been chock-full of them. These days Aperture was nearly empty, and honestly, he was grateful for some company.

It was so relieving to be able to spurt off whatever thought or memory crossed his mind to a captive audience, so he did exactly that. 'Course, with the amount of stuff he was saying, Wheatley should have realised it was inevitable that something bad would slip out. _She _(not she, the human lady; no no - the enormous, queen-of-the-facility _She_ that was _GLaDOS_) had always hated everything about humans, and some parts of that had filtered down into the cores that were once attached to _Her_. (Not that Wheatley could remember that ever happening, but since most of the other Cores had mentioned having a turn up on the chassis and a few sections in his memory banks were locked and encrypted, it wouldn't really be _surprising_. Speculation for another time, that.)

These last few minutes, Wheatley had been recounting the anything-but-fair tale of how the foreman for this area had passed him over for promotion again and again, when he was _perfectly qualified_ to work there. He'd also been occupied lighting the way for the lady, so maybe he hadn't been concentrating on his wording as much as he could have been, given present company.

"Instead, he ends up giving me the _worst_ possible job: tending to all the smelly humans – oops."

As the awkward silence swallowed his comment, the human had turned from examining a wall to face him instead. She looked – annoyed? Amused? It was hard to tell with her eyes squinted against the light from Wheatley's eye.

"Sorry, that just, er, that just slipped out. Bit rude, really." Wheatley back-pedalled hastily. "I mean, well, _you're_ not smelly! Not smelly at all."

Okay, that wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't the human's fault, Wheatley mused as he shone his flashlight on a panel ahead of them. If he had to guess, it was probably something to do with being organic.

Anyway, the lady didn't smell nearly as bad as all those other humans Wheatley had met. In his earliest memories the scientists had pored over him, covered in grease and sometimes even _sweating_ on his circuits! (You'd think that scientists would know to keep any liquid away from a computer, especially one programmed to fear it, but they hadn't cared. _At all._)

The only scientist who hadn't been completely horrible had been the one with the weird eyes. They'd only met the one time, but all that guy had smelled of was a weird chemical, one a quick database check had labelled as – fear? Oddly enough, Wheatley's attempt to use this interesting fact as a conversation starter had made all the scientists in the room panic shut him down. When he'd woken up, they'd modified something in his programming again and the funny-eyed man was gone. Soon after that came the locked files of course, and then his memory skipped straight through a bunch of boring bits and went to the many jobs he'd gone through before getting put in charge of the Relaxation Centre and all its sleeping humans.

And wow! It had stunk in those vaults, worse than he'd ever experienced before.

All those humans, lying around in the same spot endlessly - and it was one of _his_ jobs to change the putrid sheets while they slept. Well, technically his job was telling the robot arms when to wash the sheets, but they were barely even sentient so it was practically the same thing. Not to mention those completely awful vaults occupied by people who'd died (not his fault), or the locked corridors around the centre with the scientists just lying there on the other side of the windows (_definitely_ not his fault). The Relaxation Centre was not a pleasant place these days for an AI who some utter sadist had given olfactory sensors.

Then, when he'd tried to wake some of the test subjects up to escape, they'd given off all sorts of moody smells, none of them good. Mostly, they'd all been either terrified of him or just completely livid. Sometimes, they'd even _attacked him_ \- and all over the smallest things, like trying to make pleasant conversation or accidentally almost dropping them into a pit.

This lady wasn't like that _at all_. To be completely honest, yeah, she did smell a tiny bit – mainly of must – but somehow nowhere near as bad as all the others. Maybe she hadn't been in the vaults for as long as the others – in fact, now he thought of it, she hadn't been, had he? She'd defeated _Her_ (pity it didn't last) and then came back somehow. Wheatley made a mental note to ask her what had happened, if she ever managed to talk.

In the meantime, what they really had to do was escape. Now, there was something nagging at him; something he'd forgotten to mention. What was it – oh! He still hadn't apologised properly for what he'd said. Wheatley had to make it up to the human as soon as she came through another portal. Now how to do it?

"Ahhh, I tell you, humans? Oh, Love 'em! Just – the way they look – 's Great! – And their – your 'Folk Lore', wonderful, yeah very colourful. Um."

His small supply of information on humans now exhausted (and a small grin on the human's face - success!), Wheatley moved on to easier and less embarrassing topics.

Practical stuff, that was the key. On task with the whole 'escape the facility' thing. Piece of cake.


End file.
